Posts Tagged ‘Shapeways’

Alas, the Tinker Dice campaign didn’t meet its base goal. I am nevertheless very grateful for everyone who backed it and/or plugged it on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, G+, forums and a smattering of other places. It’s been a good ride, and I’ve made new friends.

Thank you very much, everyone!

Since I hate to leave anyone empty-handed, though, here (at the bottom of the post) are a half-dozen files that you can use to print out your own paper versions of the dice to play with, if you’re interested. The 4×6 files fit neatly onto a 4×6 photo print, and photo paper tends to be nice and sturdy. That’s what the beta prototypes are made from. Just cut them out, fold them together and put some tape around the seams, and you’re set. You can glue the flaps and put them together that way, but in practice, that’s more fuss than it’s worth most of the time.

Alternatively, the 8.5×11 one can be printed on a standard sheet of paper or cardstock. It’s black on white to save ink, but if you all want an 8.5×11 of the colored dice, I can make those pretty quickly.

I know, I know, it’s just not the same, but these should be the same size as the plastic dice would be, so it’s hopefully better than nothing.

You can take these and print them up and play with them, just please don’t sell the designs.

I am also working on another Kickstarter campaign for metal Tinker Dice, as well as metal Gearpunk dice. I’ll have those up as soon as I can; I’m just waiting on some prototypes I can take photos and videos of. It does seem that the metal dice were intriguing enough to some to merit a separate Kickstarter, and the base goal will be a mere $1,000, which should be more accessible than the $3,000 we needed for a production run of plastic dice. I am actively looking for other production options for the plastic dice, but so far the search hasn’t borne fruit. It’s certainly possible to get places like CustomDice.com or Chessex to make these, but they are significantly more expensive that way.

…speaking of which, if any of you really want to go that route, please just email me at tishtoshtesh at gmail, and I’ll see if I can help you out. I’m not opposed to individuals taking my designs and making their own dice, either via homebrew tech like this, or asking Chessex to do it. I ran the Kickstarter campaign to see if I could get the dice out to more people at better prices, but I’m not going to say that’s the only way they can be made.

I also have the beta version of Tinker Dice up for sale in my Shapeways shop thisaway. These will be the designs we use on further Tinker Dice campaigns, with the corner screws scooted around to allow rounded corners, which allows more printing options. Again, it’s a more expensive option, but it’s a viable one. The Shapeways dice are hollow to save costs (except for the solid singletons), but they are printable as far as I can tell; they are printing up a few for me to show for the next campaign. There are plastic versions and metal versions; they differ only in the interiors; the metal dice require more interior structure to meet the Shapeways printing guidelines.

Oh, and while we’re talking about dice, might I recommend the Daft Dice Kickstarter? They do fine work with a laser cutter. I have one of their simple numbered wooden dice, and it’s a solid, handsome bit of work.

I also do the occasional commission, but to date, that’s mostly been for in-game currency over on the Puzzle Pirates forums, where I’m known as Silveransom, from whence several of the bits of art in my Mini Portfolio hail, and where one of my art tutorials resides. I’d love to open the floodgates to do commissions for cash, but since I can’t promise a quick turnaround, I’ll just say that I’m very open to requests, I’m just going to be somewhat less than a full-time production house. Somewhat less than part-time, really, but you might be surprised what is possible to do in the wee hours around midnight when the kids go to bed.

…

Y’see, things are unnaturally busy here at the Tesh household. We’re finishing the basement, so my “vacation” from work this holiday season isn’t exactly filled with carefree whimsy and mad dashes to fulfill art requests. Still, I’m working in a bit, here and there.

So yes, Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas, or whatever it is you do this time of year!

It’s “Cyber Monday”, and among other sales out there, Shapeways is having a 15% off sale. That means my Gearpunk dice are on sale, as are the World of Warcraft Druid signet rings. They are rejiggering the pricing around a bit as well, so the prices are going to be changing in my shop, too. No more of the nice progression of price points I planned out, no, it’s going to be a mess of weird numbers. That’s the bad news. The good news is that all the prices are going to be coming down a bit. I’m happy about that. Lower prices, 15% sale… it’s a good day to investigate Shapeways.

I now have the Resto and Cat form rings up for sale as well. Sorry they are late, but hey, sale day is a good day for them, right? Moonkin rings are in the pipeline, hopefully available in the next few days.

I posted about these over on the Shapeways forums, but I neglected to show them off here. The paint job isn’t done yet, but I’m pretty happy with how these turned out. (These are the dice I noted over thisaway, my Gearpunk dice, with freshly fixed D24 over on Shapeways.)

Starting out in white plastic…

Gearpunk Dice Set

I used RIT cloth dye (the white printouts are actually a nylon plastic, and the RIT dye work on nylon), a plastic spoon and a plastic cup. I never did really get the water boiling (I just used hot tap water and 30 seconds in the microwave every six minutes or so), but I kept stirring the dice in the hot water for about a half hour. In retrospect, I probably should have dyed them again to get a darker color (and I should have used a brown instead of black, which just turns out purplish), but they are dark enough to contrast well with the bronze acrylic paint I’m using to pick up the highlights.

Dice Dyed Painted

…they do look better under different lighting, and in person.

Dyed Painted Gearpunk Dice

I’m obviously not done yet with the big dice, but I’ll get there after doing all of my other projects. I really want to get Zomblobs! into playtest form within a week, and I still need to make Shapeways see my other signet rings I made. (Healer and Cat glyphs in the druid rings.)

Oh, and I finally pulled the trigger and bought RIFT from Steam’s sale this morning. Maybe I’ll play it sometime next year. I do want to give it a shot, but life is kinda busy at the moment.

I received the 3D prints of my Druid Signet ring, the Druid Glyph ring and my set of Gearpunk dice. Shapeways does good work… though it looks like I need to do a little still with the D24 to make it read cleanly. (So to the one person so far who has ordered the ten die set, I’m sorry! Please contact me via the contact info up there on the About tab, and once I get this D24 model all happy again, I’ll print out another one and send it to you. It’s not really Shapeways at fault here, I didn’t design the numbers well enough.)

It looks like I was aiming too small for the detail work, but overall, for custom 3D printing, these turned out really well. Only a decade ago, this would have been absurdly expensive to do. Now, for all three prints, it was around $50. It’s not practical for big stuff, but for little cool widgets and wodgets, this is awesome.

Druid Rings Together

The big ring is size 10 and the small ring is size 6. Bigger is better for detail work, apparently.

Druid Rings On Hand

Both of those are on my fat-fingered hand. Note to self: hands on the same person can vary in size somewhat… the ring almost got stuck on my right hand, but fit just perfectly on my left (it fit nearly as well as my wedding band; it’s quite comfortable).

Gearpunk Dice Set

Dice Size Comparison

I fully intend to dye the dice black and drybrush them with metallic paint to get the proper steampunk feel, but that will come later.

Wire, armature wire and tinfoil armature on wood, 2 hours. This is really the crucial part, because it’s the skeleton of your sculpture. It needs to be solid (though you can fudge it a little bit with a thin layer of Sculpey you put on and then cook, then put on your detail layer) so you don’t have trouble with the structural integrity. Like a figure drawing, you really need to nail down the proportions or else all the detail work in the world won’t help down the road. (Notably, I should have made Doug’s arms longer so his face would be more visible, but once I got the clay on, it was too late.)

Kefling Armature

Tools of the sculpting trade, Super Sculpey and a pair of simple plastic tools. Yes, this is really all I used beside my own two hands. You can do a lot with simple tools if you’re careful.

Tools of the Trade

Base and some detailing, 3.5 more hours. Most applications of the Sculpey are 1/4″ or less. Thinner layers bake better and faster, and are lighter so the armature doesn’t get overloaded.

Getting Started

Finished product, 6.5 more hours, plus cooking. 45 minutes at 200F, standard electric stove, cooled for 1 hour before I took it out of the oven.

They Probably Don't Need Their Winter Coats

Hero pose!

Grand total, 13 hours or so. Totally worth it. Maybe someday I’ll paint it with acrylic paints, but for today, I’m happy with it in this “raw” state. There’s a certain appeal to the basic sculpture.

Bah. Turns out that a couple of the dice models need a bit more tweaking to work with the 3D printing process. The walls were too thin. That means prices changed a bit as I thickened up the walls. Sorry!

I’ve done a little more digging in the Shapeways system, and found that I overlooked an element of the cost of models. There’s a handling fee per model, which means that if you wanted a set of the dice I made, buying them one by one incurs a whole set of handling costs. Bleh. So, by condensing the set to a single “model”, I was able to reduce the cost of getting a whole set by more than half. They can still be costly in metals (3D printing always is), but now you can get a set of six for just over $10 in the cheapest (pretty durable) White, Strong Flexible plastic material. The set of seven (with the special extra D10 “decader” die) or the full set of 10 (with the D24, D30 and alternate D4) are just a few dollars more. That’s not much more than you’d pay for a set of gaming dice from Chessex, really. OK, OK, mine are hollow to save on costs, and you’d need to ink them or paint them to really make them exciting if you’re going with the boring old plastic like me, but what hobbyist gamer doesn’t have some paints around? (Yes, I’d love to get them in the bronzed steel, but I’m still stingy.)

Me, I’m going to get the full set of ten in black plastic and drybrush them with some nice bronze paint. That should about get the effect I’m looking for. Sorry I didn’t think of this earlier! A set of these should be a lot more affordable now. Less than a month’s sub to most MMOs, as it happens…

…and yes, this means I’ll offer individual Zomblobs! eventually, but probably package them together in sets as well for cost reasons. I’m very curious to see if I can be competitive with a starter set of something like WarHammer or WarMachine. Then if I can get my ruleset in order and offer it as a free PDF (or a printed manual someday), well… I’d love to have myself a little cottage industry build around this sort of thing.

Edited to add:

I also just added a couple of D6 sets, perfect for several games including some tabletop miniature games.